Chapter 45: Inner Ruin Corridor

If the submerged outer halls were quite wide, the inner ruin corridor became narrower, causing Max to stand way behind his archer just to give them spaces.

Even then, the water on the floor lowered down until their ankle, lowering their stamina cost in moving around.

Max’s whole attention was focused behind him, until they eventually entered the corridor.

There was cracked stone on the interior of the corridor, exposing its foundations. There were visible mana leakage pools, which was undoubtedly related to demonic mana.

Thankfully, all his party members could handle the demonic mana leakage, saving Clara her mana in purifying them.

Eventually, an enemy finally popped up.

He was dressed as a knight of the empire. Knight class was usually at C-rank, giving Max a heart attack.

However, when he examined closely, especially the aura he radiated, he was a knight that was corrupted with demonic mana.

He was probably a previous corpse before he was resurrected from the corrupted demonic mana.

In other words, his strength was only probably at D-rank and he might only fight by instinct.

As the knight walked sluggishly towards them, Max said, "Jasper, go behind Eva. Eva, keep defending and distracting him, don’t try to counter, just block him."

After he was finished with his instructions, the knight finally noticed their presence and bolted towards them while swinging his rusty sword.

The water splashed every time he took a big leap towards them.

Eva froze, but she immediately managed to compose herself and took a defensive stance.

She fought against an enemy stronger than the knight in front of her—her mother—so she was able to react quickly.

At the same time, the archers nocked their arrows and aimed at the knight, releasing them simultaneously.

However, the knight was agile, easily evading with just a slight movement of his body as he managed to swing his sword towards Eva’s shield, causing the latter to hold her breath after perceiving the heavy impact.

Just as the sword collided with the shield, two simultaneous arcane bolts successfully landed at the lower stomach of the knight.

Max and Rhayne saw a huge decrease in the knight’s health with words popping up, saying, "Critical Damage."

Max then received the system’s notification.

[You have killed a corrupted knight, D-Rank.

You have been granted 100 EXP.]

Since Max dealt the entire damage alone to the knight, he hoarded all the EXP, causing Rhayne to be displeased.

Max said to her, "Your aim is not bad, but you lack the timing."

Rhayne rolled her eyes while Ethan chuckled.

"As expected of the young savior. It’s quite funny that you are teaching an archer about timing and aiming. You might have been a better archer than a mage."

Max shook his head and remained silent.

He gestured for Jasper to scout ahead as they sauntered forward.

At this moment, Jasper showed his expertise. There were traps that once activated would demonize the victim.

Hence, he pointed them out and Max got rid of them with his arcane bolt.

He wasn’t worried about his mana consumption, their pace was quite slow, inevitably causing his mana points to remain full.

For another hour inside the inner ruin corridor, they met three more corrupted knights along the way, and they successfully got rid of it.

The last one was Rhayne’s last kill, causing her to level up to 20.

She was dumbfounded that she leveled up quite quickly this way, but she was deeply elated.

Meanwhile, Max was quite confused. They kept encountering D-rank corrupted knights, while the quest notified him that the core guardian was an E-rank entity.

It doesn’t make sense when the core guardian has a lower rank than the enemies they encountered before.

Wait! What if it’s not a single demon or monster?

His heart thumped. It would make sense if the E-rank entity actually consisted of many... many, he might not be able to count once he encountered them.

He tried to simmer down his agitated heart as he thought.Thankfully, I’ve bought potions.

Furthermore, Max was quite confident of his party members’ overall strength, so his worries were instantly washed away.

For another an hour inside the inner ruin corridor, Max did not only encounter corrupted knight remnants as an opponent, but also the mana leakage zone was becoming so intense that it would interrupt his casting.

However, he took this chance to increase his mana control proficiency.

The mana leakage was then often accompanied by corrupted demonic mana that began to affect his party members.

Clara was forced to use her purify skill more often than the heal skill.

Inevitably, Max had to give her a basic mana potion, which restored 40 MP instantly.

It was enough for her to cast three more purify skills and the cool down was only 30 seconds to prevent side effects.

Even then, his mana potion was limited.

As they proceeded forward to what seemed to be an unending inner ruin corridor, Max swept his gaze at his party members after they killed another corrupted knight remnant.

He sighed. "Let’s take a rest first. I’ll find a place where there’s less corrupted mana leakage."

Thankfully, there was a spot where it lessened the corrupted mana and Max led his party members to rest there.

When his party members thought they would simply take a rest, Max, who was the only one standing while facing them, suddenly said, "Let’s reflect on our past battle. We’ll review our flaws and correct them."

They couldn’t react in time, not even when Max began to point out their flaws, starting with Jasper.

He pointed out how immobile Jasper was during the battle, failing to take a chance to injure the corrupted knight badly.

Max also didn’t hold back for Eva, pointing out her flaws in defending the corrupted knight’s attacks. He even said she might perform better without the shield.

However, Max didn’t want to take a risk, but instead, showed her the better body posture in defending to improve her shield handling capability.

Next was Ethan and Rhayne—Max has the same problem with them.

It was how they handled different arrows rather than aiming and timing. It was already useless in attacking with a wooden arrow, so it was always better to use the heavy arrow.

Even then, they’ve already refrained from using heavy arrows after knowing they kept failing anyway.

Max was inevitably displeased by their mindset.

Nevertheless, he tried to be as patient as possible and also taught them how to read the enemies’ body movements to show them the right time to release their arrows.

Once the session was finished, every party member was flabbergasted.

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